Grains, Vegetarians, Vegans and Nutritional Density

Yesterday I posted about how well it’s going with the book and its 2nd Edition. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 3 on grains, vegetarianism, veganism and a bunch of nutritional comparisons. This is first draft stuff, so it has yet to go to the editor or proofreading. Those who read the first edition will notice this section as being tremendously expanded.

~~~

Even when not considering the problems with grains in terms of gluten, and other lectins, be aware that they are not very nutritious.

Listen, everyone, and listen closely: if you eat grains as a significant part of your diet, you are getting CRAP nutrition as compared to a Paleo-like diet. It’s simply a fact, the “healthy-whole” fraud notwithstanding. And if that’s not enough to convince you, then ask yourself why virtually all grain products have the word “fortified” stamped on the package. Good nutritional sources need never be “fortified.”

How about a visual representation? What if we compared the nutrition in an average loaf of bread (about 1,400 calories) to say, the same number of calories of beef liver and salmon?

Bread

Beef Liver

Salmon

Don’t look just at the height of the bars, but at the numbers at the top of the bars. A bar at the top means “off the scale.” Examining the numbers gives you an idea of how proportionally off the scale each nutrient is relative to the same nutrient in ”fortified” bread. For most micronutrients, a Paleo diet outstrips a standard, grain-based diet by 100–300% in terms of nutritional content. The livers of all animals and fish are nature’s true “multi-vitamin.” For a more thorough look, see my post at Free the Animal that incorporates these images.

Let’s run the actual numbers above, comparing 1,400 calories of bread to the same amount of beef liver for the 21 different nutrients listed. On average, for bread—adding up all the numbers at the tops of the bars— you get average nutrition across the 21 nutrients of 85% (1,777 / 21). That is, if you eat the entire loaf in a day, you’re still 15% under the government’s established recommendations.

Now let’s have some fun with the liver: 2,640%! No, that’s not a typo: Two Thousand Six-Hundred Forty Percent! (55,403 / 21), almost 25 times as much nutrition as the bread. Think of that the next time you hear nonsense about “superfoods”—and it’s always some silly berry, or leaf, or something else that while decent, never holds a candle to animal foods in terms of nutrition. When is that last time you heard of any animal food being referred to as a superfood in any mainstream outlet? Probably never. That’s how backwards everything is and just another example of what you’re up against.

Want another example? How about raw oysters on the half shell, which I happen to love. Thing is, it’ll be tough for you to get 1,400 calories worth. In fact, 24 raw oysters, a large serving indeed, has only 230 calories, 1/6th of that 1,400 calorie loaf of “fortified” bread. But guess what? in that 230 calories you’ll find 400% of the USRDA for those same 21 nutrients in our comparison. So, one-sixth the caloric energy, almost five times the nutrition!

So how about if we compare a relatively nutritious plant food to bread? Potatoes are just such a thing. Sweet potatoes are slightly more nutritious than plain white potatoes, so let’s use those. Another thing about potatoes in general is that they’re gluten free, unlike bread, but—depending on the variety—can have 10—13% protein and it’s a quality amino acid profile; whereas, the tiny protein in bread is virtually all gluten, a big problem for increasing numbers of people. One large sweet potato (excluding any garnishes like butter and not eating the skin) will provide you with 200 calories, one-seventh of that loaf of bread. But the nutrition over those 21 nutrients is 25% of your USRDA. Yes, one potato per day gets you 25% of your nutrition. If you were to eat seven of them—in order to match the caloric energy of the bread—you’d get 175% of your USRDA, or exactly two times the “nutrition” in the loaf of bread. …For centuries, potatoes have been considered a poor man’s food, yet their nutritional density is such that eating only half of an average male’s daily caloric requirements gets you twice your recommended allowance in vitamin and mineral nutrition! Bread is the true poor man’s food.

[…]

What About Vegetarianism and Veganism?

First, it’s important to draw a clear distinction between vegetarianism and veganism: vegetarians traditionally consume nutritionally-dense animal nutrition in the form of eggs and dairy. Vegans do not. Nutritionally, this makes a world of difference. Either you consume animal products or you don’t, and that’s the real distinction to understand.

Some vegetarian societies, such as India, have thrived for millenia, but there has never been any such thing as a vegan society. A fruit-based, raw vegan diet that excludes all animal nutrition is only theoretically possible in narrow, niche environments, such as a rain forest. I say “theoretical,” because even supposed primate herbivores are omnivorous. They eat bugs, worms, grubs and termites, and sometimes turn to actual predation and eating of other primates.

You’re already familiar with the nutritional comparison of bread versus animal nutrition and even potatoes. But how about fruit? While fruit is indeed a Paleo food, is it suitable as your only food? Some people think so. So let’s see.

The blog post in question was the result of a live Internet debate I had with a raw fruitarian vegan in April of 2011, with 1,000 people listening in on phone lines and many others streaming live over the internet. During that debate, I issued a challenge to vegans: compare a meal of just fruit to a meal of just beef liver, nutritionally. One vegan took up the challenge and this was the result: Nutrition Density Challenge: Fruit vs. Beef Liver. The comparison took place in two parts. The first part sought to find out how much raw fruit (various, mixed) would be required to roughly equal the vitamin and mineral profile for only 4 ounces of beef liver. The answer is that it took 5 pounds and 850 calories of fruit to roughly equal the nutrition of 4 ounces and 150 calories of beef liver!

But who eats only 150 calories for breakfast? What happens if, in addition to the liver, we add a sweet potato, some eggs, and a little fruit, in order to get up to equivalent 850 calorie meals?

The charts below represent the overall nutrition over 21 nutrients with the vegan, raw fruit meal on top and the omnivorous meal on bottom.

850 Calorie Comparison

Again, look at the numbers at the tops of the bars that are off the chart in order to judge the real relative comparison. As with our other nutritional comparisons, here’s how these meals stack up:

850 Cal Mixed Raw Fruit: 127% USRDA (4 of 21 nutrients over 100%)

850 Cal Omivorous Meal: 440% USRDA (12 of 21 nutrients over 100%)

Yes, indeed, in the fruit meal there are only 4 of the 21 nutrients that provide 100% or more of the RDA, but 3 of those 4, just barely (vitamin C being the only one off the scale). So in essence, a single nutrient at 1,500% of the RDA skews the whole analysis pretty badly. If we were to take vitamin C out of the equation and just average the other 20 nutrients, the fruit meal provides only 57% of the RDA. As you can see, however, we do not have nearly this same problem with the omnivorous meal, because 12 of the 21 nutrients are over 100% and of those, 5 are off the scale. Just removing vitamin C as we did in the fruit meal changes nothing at all, because the general nutrition is excellent and widespread.

This is a very, very sad reality for vegans.

Vegans are experimenting with their lives to a profound degree, far beyond just tweaking a variable or two. Rather than eliminating the most egregious neolithic agents, like wheat, sugar and high-omega-6 industrial oils, they eliminate everything our ancestors ate going back more than 4 million years. The vegan diet requires the massive destruction of habitat for “fields of grain,” modern processing techniques, and delivery to markets far far away. Vegans hardly live in the pristine natural paradise they try to sell you on.

Veganism in general, and raw veganism in particular, is a recent human phenomenon that constitutes a mass nutritional experiment with its basis more in ideology, feeling, and myth than in biology, physiology, and nutrition. Vegans begin, as do many Western religions, with their own version of the doctrine of Original Sin.

They try to make you believe that you’re guilty by nature. You love the taste and smell of grilling animal flesh, and that makes you a bad person. Vegans sacrifice their desire to eat flesh in favor of “higher ideals”—as if there was any ideal higher than to live the life of a human animal on Earth as nature has suited.

Those listening to the “experts” or buying into fundamentalist vegan ideals are getting fatter and sicker. If you forget what you’ve learned from the ADA and mainstream nutritionists, self-experiment with the lifestyle you were born to live, and follow your instincts to eat real food, the pounds will start melting away and your health will improve immensely.

Additional Resources

The Bible of the vegetarian and vegan zealots is, of course, The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell. For an exhaustive series of critiques of the book using Campbell’s methods to statistically analyze the Actual China Study Monograph data, see Raw Food SOS, blogged by statistics geek Denise Minger.

Want more proof that a diet with any significant grain content is nutritionally inferior, and woefully so? See this post at Free the Animal comparing an average day’s nutrition for a SAD eater with that of a Paleo eater.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Richard, I recall reading somewhere that Indian and other vegetarian/vegan populations were, indeed, consuming animals in the form of insects or, if near the ocean and using seaweed in their diets, micro-crustaceans. Once food hygiene and inspection became the norm for all harvests, the nutritional value of vegetarian diets plummeted, because the bugs and bacteria or crustaceans they were eating were no longer present on their food and hence in their diets. It was an intriguing idea and one of the things that made me do some deeper thinking about a vegan diet.

I also think it is important to make some points about bioavailability. We all know, by now, that just because grains contain certain vitamins and minerals, we are not necessarily capable of absorbing and using them in our bodies due to the indigestible qualities of these plant foods. Same for the iron in spinach, and the calcium in milk (an occasion where the bioavailability of calcium is greater from plant sources than animal sources). The nutrient profile of foods is only half of the story; how our bodies are capable of extracting and using that mine of resources is the other half that is not stressed enough in the lay literature on the subject of diets.

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Richard – you absolutely need to adjust the scales to show the full measurements. This will give a proper comparison and visually will make the point MUCH clearer with no explanation necessary. “tip jar”

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Yea, I’ve thought of this, mark, which would be easy enough in the graph function of a spreadsheet program. Problem is, if you look at the numbers, in order to fit it into a reasonable sized graphic for a book, it would be like comparing the distance to the moon in some cases with the height of The Empire State.

OK, I went and did it, bread vs liver. It’s just not meaningful because the vertical axis scales to 30,000 and most of the other values are less than 100. So, it’s basically a graph showing vitamin A, B12 and Copper and you need a magnifying glass to see anything else, even expanded full screen on my Apple 27″ cinema display.

Richard, mark and john have a good point, but I agree in practice it doesn’t work well except for the 850 cal meals.
There’s a compromise that allows better visual than One scale for this situation, where the difference between samples’ scales isn’t very continuous (lots of things in the hundreds for one sample, lots of things in the thousands for another) :
You can just Break the scale in two, up to say 300, then hash lines for the break, then start-up in the thousands – this gets you a better visual contrast without losing all information at the low numbers (though I’d suggest only go to 10k, leaving just one nutrient ‘off-scale’). Can play with it until get most satisfying visual effect, or, you know, just email it to me in any spreadsheet program, I’ll fool-around with it, I’m working from home for a few days.

Oh yeah, I agree with Sean, logarithmic might do it too, not as big contrast as linear scale but at least Some visual contrast and again not losing all info at the low end (but you Will lose some this way).

You can just Break the scale in two, up to say 300, then hash lines for the break, then start-up in the thousands – this gets you a better visual contrast without losing all information at the low numbers (though I’d suggest only go to 10k, leaving just one nutrient ‘off-scale’).

Yeah, this would probably have the best visual impact, you crowdsourcing bastard.

Richard, If your blog was successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great commenter somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable blog that you have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in fiber optic cable and routers. If you’ve got a blog — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the blogs could make money off the Internet.

But of course, Sean.
However, don’t forget selfish self-interest.
I, for example, am just angling for an invite to his sea-side paradise when he finally decides to retreat there – I spear-fish the octopi, you guys do all the rest, eh? ;)

Well, you are right, technically it is not really spear-fishing, it is spear-hunting – one must dive, and hold breath for several minutes – I am good at this, much practice (and note, I am trying hard not to speak with a French accent here, keeping your previous sensibility in mind ;))

Actually, just use more graphs. Show the first graph to scale with some things so tiny it can’t be seen then show a second zoomed in graph where some things are off the charts but you can see all the smaller things now.

Or, do charts of each individual nutriet with all the foods you can get it in lined up side by side.

So say you need 2500 calories a day to break even. That’s 75 cups of kale. I don’t think I want to spend much time around someone who eats 75 cups of kale a day, the farting alone would be intolerable.

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You should create what vegans consider to be the healthiest meal possible (lots of soy for protein, lots of whole grains for carbs and fruits/veggies) and see where the RDAs come into the healthiest possible meal for omnivores. Listing out in detail each meal, it would give your charts a lot more credibility. Then maybe say something like “It would take XXXX calories to get close to the RDAs of a XXX calorie omnivorous meal.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

I think he means that, as we know, people who go from the SAD to veganism experience health improvement and gain a sense of well-being temporarily as the body is eating its own fat finally and is getting respite from the anti-nutrient tsunami of the SAD. So for those vegans just starting out, this article will indeed be dismissed because of that line Andy mentioned.

josef,
It *would* seem like religion, except for one glaring difference–this all has basis in provable fact. We may not have actually proved all the facts yet, but they’re there for the discovering, unlike, say, whether or not there was really a virgin birth.

The big reason why you’re even finding yourself saying this is because people, thanks to the miracle of Progress!(tm) have found ways to make and market foods that trick your body into thinking it’s getting some amazing treat (thanks to too much salt/sugar/bad fats etc.) when in reality you’re being fed the nutritional equivalent of edible styrofoam. It will keep you alive, but only just. Put it another way, it’s as if you’re saying, “‘Real life’ is a boring life-sentence, but COCAINE! That’s the life for me!” You’ve been duped by an unnatural, unsustainable, and hyperbolic state of eating, and now “normal” isn’t good enough for you anymore.

If there had never been such inventions, would you be sitting in the forest, complaining over your fruits and nuts and veggies and meat that you REALLY wish you could eat bark and dirt instead (their being the forest junk food equivalent for purposes of the analogy)? That only bark and dirt make eating not an ordeal? What’s so bad about the actual human diet??

The problem is, you’ve been trained by marketing (both to your brain and taste buds) that poison is the more desirable food item. This is a fictitious construct, and you’re letting it and the marketers run/ruin your life. Would you starve in protest if there were nothing in the “middle aisles” of supermarkets? I, personally, find the sheer revelation about processed food enough to make the paleo food taste even better than it otherwise would. But if you still just want to eat these modern, food-like inventions, go for it–it may not be a life-sentence tastebud-wise, but it will probably be one medication-wise.

Origins, Larousse, charlatan : “Autrefois, personne qui, sur les places publiques, vendait des drogues, arrachait les dents, etc., avec un grand luxe de discours, de facéties.”
Originally, someone who, in public places, sells drugs, arranges teeth etc with a great wealth of conversation and jokes.
This is something to aspire to Richard! After all, you are half-way there with the health-oriented “etc” and the “wealth of conversation”, in a very successful public place at that :)

Trackbacks

Richard, I recall reading somewhere that Indian and other vegetarian/vegan populations were, indeed, consuming animals in the form of insects or, if near the ocean and using seaweed in their diets, micro-crustaceans. Once food hygiene and inspection became the norm for all harvests, the nutritional value of vegetarian diets plummeted, because the bugs and bacteria or crustaceans they were eating were no longer present on their food and hence in their diets. It was an intriguing idea and one of the things that made me do some deeper thinking about a vegan diet.

I also think it is important to make some points about bioavailability. We all know, by now, that just because grains contain certain vitamins and minerals, we are not necessarily capable of absorbing and using them in our bodies due to the indigestible qualities of these plant foods. Same for the iron in spinach, and the calcium in milk (an occasion where the bioavailability of calcium is greater from plant sources than animal sources). The nutrient profile of foods is only half of the story; how our bodies are capable of extracting and using that mine of resources is the other half that is not stressed enough in the lay literature on the subject of diets.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Richard – you absolutely need to adjust the scales to show the full measurements. This will give a proper comparison and visually will make the point MUCH clearer with no explanation necessary. “tip jar”

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Yea, I’ve thought of this, mark, which would be easy enough in the graph function of a spreadsheet program. Problem is, if you look at the numbers, in order to fit it into a reasonable sized graphic for a book, it would be like comparing the distance to the moon in some cases with the height of The Empire State.

OK, I went and did it, bread vs liver. It’s just not meaningful because the vertical axis scales to 30,000 and most of the other values are less than 100. So, it’s basically a graph showing vitamin A, B12 and Copper and you need a magnifying glass to see anything else, even expanded full screen on my Apple 27″ cinema display.

Richard, mark and john have a good point, but I agree in practice it doesn’t work well except for the 850 cal meals.
There’s a compromise that allows better visual than One scale for this situation, where the difference between samples’ scales isn’t very continuous (lots of things in the hundreds for one sample, lots of things in the thousands for another) :
You can just Break the scale in two, up to say 300, then hash lines for the break, then start-up in the thousands – this gets you a better visual contrast without losing all information at the low numbers (though I’d suggest only go to 10k, leaving just one nutrient ‘off-scale’). Can play with it until get most satisfying visual effect, or, you know, just email it to me in any spreadsheet program, I’ll fool-around with it, I’m working from home for a few days.

Oh yeah, I agree with Sean, logarithmic might do it too, not as big contrast as linear scale but at least Some visual contrast and again not losing all info at the low end (but you Will lose some this way).

You can just Break the scale in two, up to say 300, then hash lines for the break, then start-up in the thousands – this gets you a better visual contrast without losing all information at the low numbers (though I’d suggest only go to 10k, leaving just one nutrient ‘off-scale’).

Yeah, this would probably have the best visual impact, you crowdsourcing bastard.

Richard, If your blog was successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great commenter somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable blog that you have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in fiber optic cable and routers. If you’ve got a blog — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the blogs could make money off the Internet.

But of course, Sean.
However, don’t forget selfish self-interest.
I, for example, am just angling for an invite to his sea-side paradise when he finally decides to retreat there – I spear-fish the octopi, you guys do all the rest, eh? ;)

Well, you are right, technically it is not really spear-fishing, it is spear-hunting – one must dive, and hold breath for several minutes – I am good at this, much practice (and note, I am trying hard not to speak with a French accent here, keeping your previous sensibility in mind ;))

Actually, just use more graphs. Show the first graph to scale with some things so tiny it can’t be seen then show a second zoomed in graph where some things are off the charts but you can see all the smaller things now.

Or, do charts of each individual nutriet with all the foods you can get it in lined up side by side.

So say you need 2500 calories a day to break even. That’s 75 cups of kale. I don’t think I want to spend much time around someone who eats 75 cups of kale a day, the farting alone would be intolerable.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

You should create what vegans consider to be the healthiest meal possible (lots of soy for protein, lots of whole grains for carbs and fruits/veggies) and see where the RDAs come into the healthiest possible meal for omnivores. Listing out in detail each meal, it would give your charts a lot more credibility. Then maybe say something like “It would take XXXX calories to get close to the RDAs of a XXX calorie omnivorous meal.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

I think he means that, as we know, people who go from the SAD to veganism experience health improvement and gain a sense of well-being temporarily as the body is eating its own fat finally and is getting respite from the anti-nutrient tsunami of the SAD. So for those vegans just starting out, this article will indeed be dismissed because of that line Andy mentioned.

josef,
It *would* seem like religion, except for one glaring difference–this all has basis in provable fact. We may not have actually proved all the facts yet, but they’re there for the discovering, unlike, say, whether or not there was really a virgin birth.

The big reason why you’re even finding yourself saying this is because people, thanks to the miracle of Progress!(tm) have found ways to make and market foods that trick your body into thinking it’s getting some amazing treat (thanks to too much salt/sugar/bad fats etc.) when in reality you’re being fed the nutritional equivalent of edible styrofoam. It will keep you alive, but only just. Put it another way, it’s as if you’re saying, “‘Real life’ is a boring life-sentence, but COCAINE! That’s the life for me!” You’ve been duped by an unnatural, unsustainable, and hyperbolic state of eating, and now “normal” isn’t good enough for you anymore.

If there had never been such inventions, would you be sitting in the forest, complaining over your fruits and nuts and veggies and meat that you REALLY wish you could eat bark and dirt instead (their being the forest junk food equivalent for purposes of the analogy)? That only bark and dirt make eating not an ordeal? What’s so bad about the actual human diet??

The problem is, you’ve been trained by marketing (both to your brain and taste buds) that poison is the more desirable food item. This is a fictitious construct, and you’re letting it and the marketers run/ruin your life. Would you starve in protest if there were nothing in the “middle aisles” of supermarkets? I, personally, find the sheer revelation about processed food enough to make the paleo food taste even better than it otherwise would. But if you still just want to eat these modern, food-like inventions, go for it–it may not be a life-sentence tastebud-wise, but it will probably be one medication-wise.

Origins, Larousse, charlatan : “Autrefois, personne qui, sur les places publiques, vendait des drogues, arrachait les dents, etc., avec un grand luxe de discours, de facéties.”
Originally, someone who, in public places, sells drugs, arranges teeth etc with a great wealth of conversation and jokes.
This is something to aspire to Richard! After all, you are half-way there with the health-oriented “etc” and the “wealth of conversation”, in a very successful public place at that :)

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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